


Fairydust

by DelilahBlueEyes



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rumpled Lace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:57:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelilahBlueEyes/pseuds/DelilahBlueEyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warning: For drug use and angst. Sydney “Glass” Foster is the major meth dealer for the town of Storybrooke. Rumplestiltskin has lost track of his Belle, but it’s Lacey he goes looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fairydust

“Here, sir.” Dove nodded his head at the house as he held the door open for his employer, voice quiet and solemn as always. Rumplestiltskin stepped out of the car and looked up at the dilapidated building, the remains of a house on the riverbank on the poorer edge of town. Somewhere a dog barked viciously as a car horn blared and the sound of breaking glass tinkering across the pavement grated against his ears. Regina’s curse sounded impossibly clichéd, sparrows and baking pies on windowsills everywhere in the town, darkness and despair and danger everywhere else. What better way to keep the flock from wandering.

 

This house was in a sorry state. Shutters hung from single hinges, paint peeled away from the exterior of the house to reveal the rotting wood beneath and debris was scattered across the dead grass. Dove closed the car door and Rumpelstiltskin heard the low chirp of the alarm setting as he set off up the cracked sidewalk toward the front door. As he raised his hand to knock on the grimy front door the barking in the distance cut off with a yelp. He decided knocking was too much of a warning and simply pushed the door open. It creaked on horribly rusted hinges and the smell that him was nearly overwhelming. Chemicals and mold and human piss. He stepped across the threshold and inside.

Mattresses spread across the floor made the footing treacherous and he felt Dove lurking just behind, ready to catch him should he trip. Soiled blankets were tangled with the mattresses, some with arms or legs or faces still visible. He slapped the foot of his cane down on a hand in his path and it slipped sluggishly out of his way, it’s owner too wasted to understand what had happened. A couple in the corner were fucking against the wall, shamelessly sprawled half across an armchair. He turned away, eyes scanning the darkened room but he didn’t recognize any of the seemingly motionless lumps as the one he was looking for. He crossed the room to the dining room to a small kitchen, once brightly papered with blue checked wallpaper. The counters were littered with cigarette butts, empty beer bottles and what seemed to be tens of empty hypodermic needles, some crusted with dark blood.

A man sat at the small table in the corner, taking a final drag of his cigarette. As the glow lit his face from beneath, his eyes became darkened pits in an emaciated face. Rumplestiltskin had just decided that there was no one else in the room when the faintest flash caught his eye. The glittery edge of a buckled platform shoe was peeping out from beneath the edge of a cushion through the doorway to the next room and he went to it and lifted the cushion. Fuck, he knew that tacky shoe. The foot inside the shoe was attached to a leg that disappeared under more cushions. He pressed one hand against the wall and used the other to begin throwing cushions haphazardly over his shoulder. One hit a window and a decorative button pinged against the glass loudly.

“Hey, man, what the hell?” The man at the table had stood to move toward him and Dove put out a restraining hand, keeping him at bay. “Look, it’s two hundred for a ‘teenth. I guarantee you, she ain’t got any money on her.”

Rumplestiltskin threw the last pillow down on the ground and knelt gracelessly on it. Her eyes were closed and lips parted, for all the world sleeping peacefully but in this place he knew better. The sleeve of her thin cotton sweatshirt was rolled up and a small bead of blood had dried in the crease of her arm where it hung over the edge of her small nest of filth. He reached out and gently touched her face, relieved when she was warm to the touch. But he could not wake her. The touch became a prod became a slap, and still she did not rouse. He lifted her upper body with one arm and held her head steady with the other, raising his voice when she still did not respond. When her eyes did slide open, they were glassy and red, unable to focus on him for more than a moment.

 

****

 

“Lacey? Lacey?! Belle!” She didn’t hear the words but saw them, falling from his mouth like sweet, heavy molasses. They dribbled over his lips to fall down his suit front and stain his tie but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

“Your words are so pretty,” she smiled dreamily up at him and raised a hand to glide against his lips, gathering a bit of the dark stuff and bringing it to her tongue. She tasted warmth and green things and expensive whiskey and giggled. “They’re yummy too.”

“What the fuck did you give her?” she felt him hiss and giggled again, trying to lift her hand to push his tickling hair out of her face.

“She came in like that.” The words were echoey and hard to understand but she knew it was The Glass Man.

Lacey tried to tell Mr. Gold that she certainly hadn’t come to the Glass house like this but her mouth wouldn’t move, wasn’t there, had flown off to have mouthy little adventures. There were more angry words being shouted and she wanted to cover her ears and suddenly a giant black cloud lifted her up and she was flying. The cloud held her arms down when she tried to raise them above her head and fly higher. There was a loud sound, someone shouted and she strained her neck to peer over the cloud’s back to see Mr. Gold hitting The Glass Man. She tried to tell the cloud to go back. She loved to see people get hit by Mr. Gold, but the cloud only kept flying away.

She was set down on something cold and she whimpered until part of the cloud came to cover her up, something big and warm. “Thank you, cloud,” she murmured, already listing to the side.

She could smell blood on the gloves Mr. Gold had in his pocket when he sat beside her. He pulled her against him and clung to her, holding her so tight that she couldn’t reach his coat to investigate the gloves. He kept saying it would be all right, she would be all right, and his hands were sweating. She wanted to tell him he was silly, she was always okay, but her eyes were closed and her head was floating away.

 

***

 

Rumplestiltskin held the door for Dove as he carefully carried Lacey inside, his black wool coat dwarfing her as they passed him. He directed Dove up the stairs and had him deposit the woman on his bed before thanking him and sending him home. He removed his own coat and sat on the edge of the bed beside Lacey. He’d slipped up before, begun shouting the name of his true love, though she was so far gone that she hadn’t heard. She lay almost completely still now, pale and smelling of stale sweat. Her legs were blessedly covered for once, in dark denim and those fucking shoes. He slipped them off her and dropped them on the floor, reaching up to push her rat’s nest of hair off her forehead.

He caught sight of his swelling knuckles but the pain was nothing to be concerned about. He’d beaten the man nearly to a bloody pulp before Dove returned to nearly force him form the house, but he knew him even with both eyes blackened. Sydney “Glass” Foster had lost his job at the Storybrooke Mirror nearly a year ago due to his constant state of inebriation. He’d apparently found this new career of distributing methamphetamines and really anything he could squeeze money out of the street urchins for. But this was no urchin in his bed, no homeless little wretch with no one to care when she didn’t come home at night. Foster would regret the day he’d ever fucking laid eyes on Lacey. He’d told him as much and the memory of the man baring yellowed teeth at him in a laugh made his fingers twitch to tighten around his throat.

He’d laughed because the police could never keep him behind bars for long. He’d never even made it as far as Boston before he was bailed out. But no, that would never be the plan for Sydney. Oh, no. He would have Dove tie him to a strong chair, carefully, so as to avoid any marks giving them away. Then he would proceed to inject any and all of the crystal available (likely quite a bit) into the man’s body and make sure it killed him. Then he would untie him and leave him to be found by the police. Everyone in town, especially his frail, ailing mother, would know what sort of man he had ended his life as. The color had drained from Foster’s face then and he’d stammered out an apology, the scent of fresh urine rising in the air around them. No, that man would never hurt his girl again. No one would ever hurt her again.

A tentative touch at the nape of his neck drew his attention back to the woman lying beside him and he turned to find her staring at him with such intense concentration on her sweet face that for a moment he expected Belle’s words to come out of her mouth.

“Your hair is like feathers,” she whispered, fingers scratching his skin lightly as her fatigue dragged at her body.

He reached back and pulled her hand to his lips for a kiss before murmuring for her to go to sleep with a weak smile. Her wrist went limp in his grasp and he set it gently on the blankets. No, Sydney would not hurt her again. No one would hurt her. No one except he himself. Every time he tried to do right by her, it hurt her. He crushed her in his clumsy hold, even as he struggled to protect her from the outside forces that could destroy her. He’d failed to keep her from the darkness and the poison that surrounded her. Lacey was as innocent as his Belle, and he’d let her wander into that hellhole and have sickness pushed through her veins. What a fucking failure he was.

 

***

 

Something woke Lacey. She turned her head toward the sound, frowning when she couldn’t make it out and forcing her eyes open. Mr. Gold still sat on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. She swallowed through a dry mouth and tried to ask for a glass of water. The bed shook under her and Mr. Gold dropped his head into his hands and his shoulders trembled under his business shirt. Lacey frowned, suddenly uncomfortable. Mr. Gold did not cry. Mr. Gold hit things and laughed and cut you with his words. Mr. Gold made her feel beautiful and stupid and special and so invisible. Mr. Gold didn’t love her, but he was her Mr. Gold. And her Mr. Gold shouldn’t cry, she decided and reached out to tell him so, the tips of her fingers grazing the fabric of his suit pants. The words wouldn’t come, though. Her mouth had gone again, off on mouthy adventures. Well, she could tell him in the morning, she thought, and closed her eyes and slept, hand loosely curled against the sobbing man’s leg.


End file.
